immediate detention

Hi, do all senior schools have a policy where they can give out detentions without 24 hours notice to parents?My dd starts her new school in September and the booklet states they can keep kids behind for 20 minutes without any warning. Is this policy now standard everywhere?Thanks

Schools can in fact give a longer detention than this, after school or any other time, with no notice - the law was changed a few years ago. If you are concerned, you could write to the school if transport issues are involved.

We give one hour same day detentions. It is part of our behaviour policy and clearly flagged to parents. We defer for a day for students who travel by bus, and where parents request it because of the need to make alternative arrangements.

Consequences should be the same and praise and rewards imho - best carried out asap or they lose impact - especially with teenagers. If a school is very rural then obviously detention should be negotiated but i'd only question it if the school was totally inaccessible from home by the child

A school needs to be aware of likely travel needs (crap if it's rural) and things such as young carers, or serious acute illness in the family. For most it is inconvenient to be late. For some, there can be serious and significant problems.

Contacting parents is the better approach, and something schools can cope with, as every school had to until recently.

I think 20 minutes is fair enough, we were kept for up to ten minutes with no notice when I was at school 15years ago so not surprised it is now 20.I wouldn't be impressed by an hour though I think yhay should need notice. I would worry if DH was an hour late home let alone one of the children.

"Schools dont have to give parents notice of after school detentions or tell them why a detention has been given."

In reality, they aren't going to be issuing detentions in the first few weeks for Year 7 pupils and will be working on reminders and verbal warnings. After the first few weeks, they do hand out same-day detentions of a short duration for lesser misdemeanours and longer detentions for more problematic behaviour. Parents are given notice of the long detentions but not the short ones at our school as I'm sure is the case elsewhere.

My DCs school has a lot who travel from about 8/10 miles away, and if they are late they miss the only buses (and there is very little public transport). So they don't issue immediate after school detentions, but for minor misdemeanours they get lunch-time ones. With 24 hour notice for major after school ones; and part of the punishment is having to deal with angry parents who may have to arrange transport home.

Certainly my school will give same day lunch-time detentions, and they do give out after-school detentions according to DS but I've never heard of same-day detentions.

Mine are at a rural school though, so there would need to be some notification. The vast majority of DC come by bus, in some case 2, with over an hour's journey for some. And the majority of the buses are school transport so you can't just get a later one.

Same day 20 minute detentions here, but then we are an urban location, with good public transport running for many hours after the end of the school day, so very unlikely it would cause more than an inconvenience. Dd had disabled transport which only left at the correct time- so she just had to make sure to stay out of detention.